None of the great nature spirits have souls either supposedly.

I actually thought the Great Spirits/Maeve/Fae were souls of Nature. They just have corporeal bodies because what Ellindel did to help heal the Prime forests.

Might read over some chapters again.
Isn't White Hart just the collective spirit of all stags, and the only way the animals could have a collective consciousness was if 1)the Creator made them well enough and 2) a Sixth Circle awakener guided them?

It was something like that.

Also I think that would imply that they didn't really have 'bodies' if they were only souls.

I'd be very disappointed if that happened, the Kephera and Illithoid are blood enemies, and to a true-blood (ie: NOT reincarnated into) of either race, a union would be pure and simple heresy. And if a Kephera and Illithoid ever DID marry, Seretenin would most likely do everything in his power to destroy that union.



Don't worry, I'll do it for you.











On the subject of Human/Illithoid cross-breeds, taking in mind Estarra's earlier comments, I feel secure in claiming the following.

1. Illithoid mating is a vicious, horrifying process often entails the death of one or both of the participants. The male and female viciously assault each other, during the course of which, the female's egg is fertilized. The copulation ceases when the male is slain. After laying the egg, the female dies, presumably of injuries incurred. Such a process would most likely be averse to any human who wishes to breed with an illithoid.

2. If a human ever WAS successful in breeding with an illithoid, the fact remains that within every illithoid, there is no shard/soul, only the excoroperditio force, which they simply refer to as the Hunger. This inner Hunger is just as virulent within any given Illithoid as it was within Illith herself, and as such, any cross-breed's soul would be consumed by the Hunger as soon as any such soul could manifest within it. Thus, any Human/Illithoid crossbreed CANNOT contain a soul, and thus if lack of a soul classifies a being as Illithoid, it would be considered as such.

-------------------------------

As for the prospect of a canon-determining event, I would be all too willing to participate in such a thing. Just send me a PM.

And if anyone wants to disagree with me on the subject of anything pertaining to the Illithoid, I remind you all that I was the only person in the Knowledge Quiz to correctly answer the question, "What was Illith's last thought before she splintered?" (Forren doesn't count.)

1. Rape


2. Human that is half illithoid would mean that it was an illithoid with a soul.

Wouldnt mating with the Son of Yudhe's shard fulfill that Hunger though?
The point of being hungry is to fill yourself, that was the whole concept I was trying to prove.


I know, I'm pushing my luck, hmn?

Aye, rape could happen, but it's unlikely. An illithoid would rather consume your essence rather than share its own with you.

And as I said above, a human that is half illithoid is no human at all. Even having a small part of the excoroperditio force within is enough to fully and completely corrupt a mortal. For canonical basis, refer to the cases of Orlachmar and Sun. Both took the Excoroperditio into themselves, and their Domothean energies were consumed by it to the point where they were no longer what they once were.

As for the notion that the 'touch' of the Son of Yudhe can fulfill the Hunger, there is, so far, no basis for that. Note that all Star Gods and thus, all mortals, have the essence of the Son in them (Souls), and they've been consumed in mass quantities. Yet the Soulless still hunger.

Well there goes most of the idea; down the drain.

But maybe breeding and literal consumption(aka killing and absorbing an Elder God) are different in their nature and how they pass something on. But then theres that exporditiocloxyborvzx force.

We need another History Book or two to clarify.

Please???

Would be interesting if the Divine did use this for some sort of event, though.
You can always hope.

Hmm. This comment made me curious. Would "Unleashed as many shall I be!" be considered the aforementioned last thought, or is it something else?

I've always thought of a shard as specifically "That which animates the mortal races."

That's to say, everything, except Illithoid, carries a shard.

I think, as per my philosophy, it's merely a force of pure energy, woven by the fates. That's why you have to reincarnate.

So, basically the mortal races are "shells" for divine energy, which is slightly different depending on which god they recieved it from, but not mutually exclusive.

I agree.
But Illith is Divine right? So even if the illithoid are soulless, shouldn't they get a soulless shard?

See, way I always thought it was was that our souls are shards of the soul of the god that splintered into our races. Illith did not have a soul, so she splintered slightly differently, and every illithoid has a piece of her body, which is an inner worm. Or if its not body, its essence or something. So its a shard of illith, but no soul.

The inner worm of an illithoid IS the illithoid. The outer body is nothing but a living shell, a gross perversion of the star form.

Despite what many people believe, the Soulless are NOT mindless destructors, they are in fact, very intelligent, just like the Elder Gods. However, they are simply consumed by their urge to feed and to 'unmake that which has been made', which is their 'raison d'etre', the task that Magnora demanded of them eons ago.

And like other intelligent creatures, they learn. Before Illith splintered, she saw how the star-formed mortals were able to overcome the Heralds, and so she decided that instead of crafting her children in her own image, she would create them as emulations of the star-form.

The inner worm is where the power of the Excoroperditio within an Illithoid lies. If the mortal shell of an illithoid is destroyed, a new form will eventually manifest around it. If the inner worm is destroyed, the Excoroperditio is virulent enough to reconstitute itself by pure force of will. Perhaps, after millenia of reproduction and multiplication, and division of the excoroperditio within illithoids as their numbers increase, this power may weaken as it has in other shard races, but for now, it has only been a mere 30 years since Illith's splintering, and her essence is still powerful and pure within the Illithoid, thus, they, for now, are effectively immortal.

Well thank you for blowing this out of the water.
I appreciate all the information you provided, I wish you told us sooner.

Mind you, this isn't actual canon, but it's what Seretenin has been trying to push forward as accepted theory IG. People just haven't heard of it because Seretenin is simply not too eager to share the secrets of the illithoid with every single mortal in the Basin. He's dropped the 'immortal' bit a few times, but he either gets dismissed as the crazy Soulless he is, or people actually get angry at him.

That's one of the reasons I love playing as an Illithoid. You can blend in just fine amongst the lesser mortals by emulating their mannerisms, but as soon as you remind them that you are a Soulless, they suddenly become all defensive, skeptical and distrustful. Even in Mag.

Edit: Oh, and I can support most of that up there with canon sources. (Soulless intelligence for example: Kethuru talking while possessing Viravain, Memories of the Black Heart of Illith, etc)

I don't deny the Soulless are intelligent, infact I'd go as far as saying they can be smarter than Elder Gods at times. Their way of going about it is just more 'primal', if you will.

Eh. First of all, I don't think the "immortal" bit will fly as actual canon, though it's fine for your character to think he is. He does still have to PRAY FOR SALVATION as far as I'm aware.

As to the second part: When you remind them of it and they become distrustful, is it them becoming distrustful of *all* Illithoid, or just the one who seems to be trying to play up the fact? I know for Xenthos, at least, it'd be the latter. An individual, no matter what race, who is claiming to be a Soulless is just a bit crazy.

To the edit: I don't really think that you can support the whole 'immortal because newer' thing with canon at all. Though I would be interested in hearing where you came up with the "Excoroperditio" term.

Tekora, that's actually been my IG theory too, but I don't buy the immortal stuff. The worm cannot really survive without a body - it suffers the same effects as a soul without a corpus to inhabit.

Xenthos, excorperditio is from the book of Clangorum (almost wrote Clannad, gah Sojiro).

They're starting to make too many terms for me to remember at this point. Hmph. Still, I don't see how that in any way makes them immortal.